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Showing posts from February, 2014

Why I Write

After a 15-year period, during much of which I have been disconnected from great literature and art, I found myself been listening to Shakespeare. Not reading, but listening to a few of his monologues, thanks to You Tube. And I am awed by the greatness of such speeches as "There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow." Or: "Now is the winter of our discontent . . ." and poems such as "The Love Song of Alfred Prufrock." Shakespeare, Dickens, Joyce, Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Eliot--so much greatness, such beauty--one sometimes wonders, is there any point in writing? Has it not all been written before? The answer: I write because I must. It may have been written before, but it is not my inner voice, and it's not the way I would write it, or have written it. Everything I have written has my personal stamp on it. It has my DNA all over it (which is why I don't think I am ever likely to be accused of plagiarism). Because, even